How Tiny Bubbles Can Help Clean Your Teeth

As your Vancouver dental care provider, our staff at Dental Designs recommends that patients visit our Vancouver dental care clinic once every six months for cleanings to help reduce the risk of dental decay and disease. While brushing and flossing remain excellent daily habits that help eliminate plaque – a harmful oral bacteria – from the mouth, professional dental cleanings more thoroughly remove hardened bacteria that contributes to the development of dental disease.

While skill and experience play an important role in our ability to maintain the oral health of our patients, our staff at Dental Designs also possesses the right tools for the job. Research behind the science that makes ultrasonic scalers – a tool used by dental hygienists to remove built up plaque deposits – has found that the formation of small bubbles around the head of the tool is a vital part of the cleaning process.

The bubble formation, or cavitation, of water around the tip of the scaler was seen with the use of high speed cameras. Researchers also compared scalers of different power and size to quantify the patterns of the bubble formation.

Researchers believe that the data they collected in the study will help manufacturers create new instrument designs that will help to maximize cavitation with the ultimate goal being to design scalers that clean a patient’s teeth without actually ever touching the surface of a tooth. By making dental cleaning tools less invasive, trips to a Vancouver dental care provider would become both more effective and less painful.

The results of the study were published in the journal PLOS ONE, and are the first to prove that cavitation takes place around the tips of ultrasonic scalers.

Path To A Cleaner, Healthier Mouth

Researchers at the University of Birmingham who conducted the study stated that the removal of dental plaque that has transformed into a hardened form known as tartar ranks as a vital part of maintaining oral health and one of the most important parts of dental exams and cleanings. The results from this study will help research create better cleaning instruments in the future that offer even more protection to patient’s long-term oral health.

In the study, researchers examined the Satelec ultrasonic cleaner, which features three different tip shapes and operates at 29 kHz. Researchers used a high speed imaging unit to examine the cleaner in action and used a scanning laser vibrometry to gain the clearest possible image of how the scaler operated.

Researcher were not only able to successful show that cavitation occurred at the end of the scaler, but that the phenomenon increased with power, and the width and area of the cavitation cloud changed for tips with different shapes.

At Dental Designs, we remain committed to providing our patients with the latest and most advanced dental care techniques possible. With advanced like this one, we hope to continue to provide you with the type of thorough cleanings needed to ensure you and your family enjoy a lifetime of healthy teeth and gums.